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Since turning 30 and having that panic last year, the one thing that I still wasn’t great on was my skincare. I’m pretty lazy with my skin, to be honest. I was invited to the launch of S-Thetics at 58 Queens Square and was interested to learn more.

The founder of S-Thetics, Miss Sherina Balaratnam explained to us about what the iS Clinical treatments that they used involved, and demonstrated a Fire and Ice facial treatment which uses different temperatures to resurface the skin. At the clinic, they have this odd looking machine…

…which is a Visia skin analysis machine. You put your chin on the bottom rest and rest your forehead against the upper rest, and you have photos taken in different lights from different angles so the computer can analyse your skin and do things like count your wrinkles and see how sun damaged your skin is. I went back a week or two later to have my own analysis done, which was a bit of an (expected!) eye opener. You can see my results below…I know, I look pretty glamourous here!

After the event, we were given a goody bag which had samples of the different products recommended, which I have been using since. My skin is usually very reactive to most skincare things that I’ve tried, but it’s been pretty happy with this regime, and I would recommend at least a visit if your skin is as grumpy as mine with most things!

The first week of May is Bristol Food Connections week, where lots of different events happen all over the city as part of a big food festival. Two of my favourite tweeters, @waiyeehong and @restingchef are getting together to host a dumpling making workshop, and I had a sneaky preview one Sunday afternoon when the craymart needed to test the recipe. Obviously, I couldn’t say no because, well, dumplings.

So! We put together a pork based filling which was quite unphotogenic

For the first batch of dumplings, we used ready made wrappers. You can buy these frozen from Wai Yee Hong if you’re in Bristol, or you can make your own with just flour and water.

A small amount of filling is put on the wrapper, and if they’re frozen, you need to wet the edges so it will stick together.

Pinch, pinch, pinch…

Once we had made enough, we cooked some off because testing is super important, you know.

Oooh, look at those dumplings! Crispy and delicious, with a bit of sauce on the side to dip into.

While photos and videos can show you how something is done, being shown in person is even better, so if you’re free on Saturday 9th May, head over to the Wai Yee Hong website and book your spot on the dumpling making workshop. You’ll learn how to fold jiaozi, how to cook them and…ok, you don’t need any help eating them, but you will get a bag of ingredients from Wai Yee Hong to go with your creations and will be shown other things like how to make wontons and other ways of folding.

Today marks a year since the very first #blogclub. Apparently I’ve never written about it here, which is weird since it was such a big part of last year so thought it was about time.

A few years ago, I was thinking “hey, wouldn’t it be cool to have a regular meetup with some awesome bloggers where you can just talk about blogging and not have other peoples eyes glaze over”. Because it’s me, I never really did anything about it, but the idea didn’t go away.

When she was working at Viral Ad Network, Sophie contacted me to see if I was interested in having YouTube ads on Bonjour, Blogger!Since I wouldn’t click on those ads, I didn’t think anyone else would, so it wouldn’t be worth having them on my site, but we got chatting, and ended up creating #blogclub.

We’ve had a few meetups but the thing that I’m really happy about is building up the little group of Bristol bloggers. On Friday, Sophie, Lily, Lyzi and I headed to Emily’s house for spag bol, booze and a lot of talking and it was excellent! It was what I wanted to do all those years ago when I started the UK Bloggers Map – so thank you everyone who has supported #blogclub in someway in 2014 – I’m already looking forward to doing many more this year!

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